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About

Grml is a bootable live system (Live-CD) based on Debian. It
includes a collection of GNU/Linux software especially for system
administrators and users of texttools. Grml provides automatic hardware
detection. You can use Grml (for example) as a rescue system, for
analyzing systems/networks or as a working environment. It is not
necessary to install anything to a harddisk; you don't even need a
harddisk to run it. Due to on-the-fly decompression grml includes about
2 GB of software and documentation on the CD.

Whereas grml provides about 2.1 GB of software on a ~700 MB ISO and
grml-small is a flavor with only ~100 MB
ISO-size, grml64-medium tries to close
the gap between those two flavours providing an ISO with ~200MB. It does
not provide all the software shipped with normal/big/large grml but
provides essential stuff, a full featured kernel and the X.org server.
You can use the Debian package management system to install software on
the fly (assuming you have network access to a Debian mirror). Take a
look at the 'Debian-Information'-section if you
are searching for the package list.

New features

Special new features:

vesamenu bootsplash: this graphical bootsplash
version (see screenshot on the right) provides an easy to use boot
selection menu.

dd-able ISO: the ISO can be installed to a device
directly using dd(1). This means you can run (warning: overwrites any
existing data) 'dd if=grml.iso of=/dev/sdX' on your USB pen and will
get a bootable grml system. This method isn't as flexible as the grml2usb approach but might be useful if you
don't have a working grml2usb setup.

Integration of Etherboot/gPXE. In the Addons
submenu of the bootsplash you can directly invoke Etherboot/gPXE.

Integration of Grub. In the Addons submenu of
the bootsplash you can directly invoke Grub1 and Grub2.

bootoption nostartx: if using startx as
default bootoption the bootoption 'nostartx' disables automatic
startup of X.

bootoption netscript: use this parameter to
download and run a script from a specific location. Supports variables
like $HOSTNAME, $ARCH, $KERNEL to download host specific software.
Usage example: 'netscript=example.org/$HOSTNAME/startup-script'
'netconfig' has been adjusted to also support this variables.

DNS info as hostname: the hostname of the live
system will be automatically set to the information retrieved via
DHCP/DNS (if present). This feature can be disabled using the
nodhcphostname bootoption. Feature contributed by
Andreas Thienemann.

reworked configuration framework: the so called
DCS feature (debs, configuration and scripts) provides a more
consistent configuration for bootoptions like scripts, netconfig,
debs,.... The DCS directory defaults to the root directory of the live
image. If a file system labeled GRMLCFG is found, the DCS directory is
the root directory of that file system. Alternatively, the myconfig
boot parameter can be used to directly specify a device which is then
taken as DCS directory (myconfig=/dev/sda1, for example). The
documentation of the behavior up to Grml 2009.05 is documented as
well as the
behavior in current Grml versions. Special thanks to Marc Haber
for his work.

grml-autconfig configuration: support for
overwriting values via /etc/grml/autoconfig.local has been added, so
configuration changes are possible without running into file conflicts
on upgrade.

New features in Grml's Zsh

grml zsh documentation: grmlzshrc(5) is a manpage providing
detailled information about grml's zsh configuration. On the grml
system it is available offline via 'man grmlzshrc'. An online version is available
as well. Special thanks to Joerg Woelke for his work.

Directory specific shell configuration with Zsh:
based on directories you can set your own profiles. Further details available
online.

Using history-incremental-pattern-search-* for
incremental history searches per default (via ^r and ^s). Press ctrl-r
to search in the history using the specified pattern. For example you
can type 'cd*grml' for searching command lines containing 'cd
~/devel/grml2usb' or 'cd ~/git/grml-live. You can iterate through the
results as usual too retyping ^r or ^s.

New grml-scripts:

grml-exec-wrapper: simple but smart program
execution wrapper. This script is for executing commands but check
whether the specified program is available at all. If the command is
not available an error message is displayed either on the command line
(if $DISPLAY is empty) or as graphical version (if $DISPLAY is
set).

Bugfixes

Important Changes

Use of Debian Geo Mirror: Grml uses
cdn.debian.net as Debian mirror in the sources.list setup nowadays.
This should select a mirror near to the location of the user, so the
default Debian mirror in Grml is no longer a server from Germany
only. Visit the
Debian Wiki for further information.

Use of sources.list.d: the Debian mirror
configuration moved from /etc/apt/sources.list to the directory
/etc/apt/sources.list.d/. The Grml mirror configuration can be found
in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/grml.list and the Debian mirror
configuration is located in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.list.

Packages / Software

Details about shipped packages and their versions on grml64-medium are
available at the Debian section. Visit dpkg_get_selections
for a main package listing and dpkg_list for a more
detailed list of packages shipped with grml64-medium 2009.10.

Updates

Updated all packages to Debian Unstable branch by 22nd of october
2009 (plus some further selected updates).

Removed 7 packages (excluding lib* and *2.6.28-grml64*) - please
notice that some of them are available under
different names/in different packages: